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This week on Reel Genius, Robert and I work through our thoughts and feelings on Interstellar and determine that all you need is love. Wait, that’s what the movie says. And The Beatles. Neither of us were crazy about it, as you may tell by the use of words such as “clunky,” “cold” and “shut up.” Looks great. Less filling. Interstellar will have many, many fans. We’re just not among them.

Matthew McConaughey with his ageless wife, Camila Alves, at ACL on Oct. 3.

Forget James Franco and Shia LeBeouf. The next Hollywood star to go meta — without actually going off the deep end — is Texas’ own Matthew McConaughey, who rocked a nod to his breakout role last weekend at Austin City Limits.

Sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with a Dazed and Confused line recognizable even by under-rock dwellers who somehow missed mandatory viewing of the cult-classic during freshman orientation their first year of college, McConaughey hat-tipped his own hazy Austin days. Remember the bongos?

With his career booming and more serious roles rolling in, it’s like he’s almost cracked the never-before-seen “reverse Hollywood meltdown.” But, good on him for still laughing about the more confusing times.

This image released by HBO shows Woody Harrelson, left, and Matthew McConaughey from the HBO series "True Detective." Both Harrelson and McConaughey were nominated for Emmy Awards for best actor in a drama series on Thursday, July 10, 2014, for their roles in the series. The 66th Primetime Emmy Awards will be presented Aug. 25 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

It should come as no surprise at this point that Texas is a major breeding ground for TV talent. If there was any doubt, Thursday morning’s Emmy nomination haul squashed it.

Matthew McConaughey’s acting nod for HBO’s True Detective was a slam dunk, and it was nice to see costar Woody Harrelson join him. McConaughey still has an excellent chance to nab an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year. Look elsewhere on the list, however, and you’ll find more Lone Star Love:

Dallas native Robin Wright was nominated for best actress in a drama for House of Cards. Her calculating Claire Underwood has become of the most fascinating characters on TV.

SMU grad Kathy Bates was recognized in the supporting actress, miniseries or movie category for her work on American Horror Story: Coven. Dallas theater veteran Allison Tolman was nominated in the same category for Fargo.

Jacksonville native Margo Martindale was nominated for best guest actress in a drama series for The Americans.

Former Dallas suburbanite and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge saw his latest invention, Silicon Valley, nominated for best comedy series.

In the larger Emmy field, there’s this: Netflix isn’t going anywhere. The Internet powerhouse scored 31 nominations, led by massive hauls for House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. To subvert the old HBO tagline: Netflix is TV. Get used to it.

Remember when movie stars were accused of slumming when they crossed over and did TV? So ten years ago. Today the small screen is where the big names go to get prestige.

The latest example: Grace and Frankie, the upcoming series that Netflix announced today. Jane Fonda will star alongside Lily Tomlin. They play longtime rivals sent swirling when their husbands announce they’re in love and plan to marry. The 13-episode first season will premiere next year.

Fonda, who also has a supporting role on HBO’s The Newsroom, is just the latest big screen personality to find a home on cable (or, in the case of Netflix, the Internet, though that distinction matters less and less with each passing day). Newly minted Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson just finished the first season of HBO’s hugely popular True Detective. Kevin Spacey presides over House of Cards. Jessica Lange is a fixture on American Horror Story. Jeff Daniels is the man on The Newsroom. We could go on, but you get the point.

These aren’t bit parts. They’re big, juicy roles in series that afford their stars the time and space to tell meaty stories. Quality TV has become a particularly attractive option for movie actresses, who find a haven from a movie business that simply doesn’t write parts for older women.

Then there’s us, the viewers, more and more inclined to avoid the ticket prices and hassles of the multiplex. We can have at least as much time at home. With some of our favorite movie stars.

How does an actor go from The Wedding Planner and Failure to Launch to Dallas Buyers Club and an Oscar nomination? This week on Reel Genius Robert Wilonsky and I trace the career evolution of one Matthew McConaughey, the Longview native who took control of his career and embarked on a string of great performances in the past couple of years.

He was good from the moment he hit the screen in Dazed and Confused. But to get where he is now he waded through a series of forgettable romantic comedies that made you question his judgment. No longer. The man is on a roll. We try to figure out how it started.

The Screen Actors Guild nominees were announced this morning. Sometimes they help predict Oscar winners. Often they don’t. In either case, Dallas Buyers Club did quite well, snagging nominations for Matthew McConaughey (best actor) and Jared Leto (best supporting actor), as well as a nod for best ensemble cast.

I’d argue the ensemble nomination is redundant, unless you thought Jennifer Garner’s performance as a sympathetic doctor jumped off the screen. I didn’t think so. In fact, aside from McConaughey and Leto, who were both fantastic, I wasn’t too impressed with the other performances. The drop-off after the two main actors is part of what made Buyers Club a good movie rather than a great one.

Every year the Dallas Morning News staff selects nominees for Texan of the Year. Here’s our case for the most sizzling actor on the planet, Matthew McConaughey.

Matthew McConaughey began his escape from the rom-com vortex before 2013 with movies like Killer Joe and Magic Mike. But this was the year he took off like a comet and showed what fans have always known: The tall Texan from Longview can act his tail off.

He’s got awards buzz brewing for three parts that have little in common. In Mud he plays a survivalist refugee who befriends a pair of teens on an Arkansas island. In the upcoming Wolf of Wall Street he’s a bond shark who has the best moments in the best trailer of the year.

The peak of the triangle is Dallas Buyers Club, for which he’s practically assured a best-actor Oscar nomination. McConaughey famously lost 40 pounds to play Ron Woodroof, the Dallas electrician who morphed from homophobe redneck to AIDS drug advocate. But it’s his wily energy and bottomless empathy that really shine through. McConaughey is currently the leading light of the Texas film world, a genuine movie star whose talent burns way beyond skin deep.

How good is Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club? We need two forms of media to tell you. You can watch Robert Wilonsky and I discuss it on a new episode of Reel Genius, above. And you can tune in to the Big Screen, where Stephen Becker and I preside at 8:20 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. every Thursday on KERA (90.1 FM). That one is also on iTunes.

One quibble all three of us share: The movie suffers from a lack of place, largely because it was shot in New Orleans. And that green screen shot of the Big D skyline isn’t fooling anyone. Still, the story of Ron Woodroof, a Dallas electrician who turned himself into an AIDS drug advocate, conveys the power of personal transformation and tolerance.

A few years ago Matthew McConaughey was stuck in a creative rut of unremarkable romantic comedies, more notable for chest shots than story or character. Then something happened. He was offered, and he accepted, a string of parts that played to his strengths as an adventurous and unpredictable actor.

As Dallas Buyers Club hits theaters Friday, it’s no surprise that McConaughey’s recent spate dominates this list of his Top 5 performances. And it looks like there’s more greatness on the horizon: McConaughey’s future docket includes The Wolf of Wall Street (due out Christmas), for Martin Scorsese, and Interstellar (coming next year), for Christopher Nolan.

5. Bernie - Richard Linklater reenlisted his old buddy to play an opportunistic small-town prosecutor in this dark East Texas comedy.

4. Mud – If you need someone to play a grimy, sensitive convict hiding out on an island with a couple of adolescents, Matt’s your man.

3. Dazed and Confused – McConaughey was more than alright, alright, alright as an arrested development case in Linklater’s breakout high school nostalgia trip.

2. Killer Joe – There’s a scary cool behind those good looks, as this chicken-fried Gothic made abundantly clear.

Dallas Buyers Club and Parkland both tell quintessential Dallas stories – but neither movie was shot in Dallas. This week Robert Wilonsky debriefs me on these Dallas/not-in-Dallas films, which I saw last week at the Toronto International Film Festival. Short version: Matthew McConaughey gives another monster performance in Buyers Club as Ron Woodruff, the homophobic Dallas redneck who becomes an unlikely connection for HIV drugs. Parkland, wich looks at figures caught up in the swirl of the JFK assassination, has its moments, but there’s a little too much going on. Please watch and admire our sports coats.

TORONTO – I’ve been checking out the Dallas movies at the Toronto International Film Festival, and discussing what will be obvious for viewers in Big D: these films weren’t shot in Dallas. Over the weekend I wrote about Parkland, which, aside from some opening Dealey Plaza footage, was shot in Austin. The producers found an old hospital that fit the Parkland look of 1963, saw an opportunity to save two million bucks by not building an elaborate set, and they were off to the races.

Then there’s Dallas Buyers Club, which made like so movie Texas-set stories and skedaddled over to shoot in New Orleans. The reason couldn’t be simpler: Louisiana still offers far better tax incentives than Texas does. And money talks louder than authenticity ever could in Hollywood.

Matthew McConaughey knows the deal. He stars in Buyers Club as Ron Woodruff, the homophobic hell-raiser who became an AIDS drug activist and provider in Dallas.

“New Orleans has been doubling for Texas for a while,” McConaughey said Monday. “I fight to shoot in Texas, but I don’t know if I have the pull or the leverage or the pocketbook to get productions to shoot there. Obviously if we could shoot this in Dallas for the same price, we’d shoot it in Dallas. Then you’d get all those extra things where people from Texas can say, ‘I know where that is!’ But the studios are gonna check out where they can save every penny on that dollar.”

McConaughey also starred in Killer Joe, which was set in Dallas but shot in New Orleans. By now he knows a thing or two about how to make the Big Easy look like Big D.

“You have to watch the tropical foliage,” he says. “That ain’t in Dallas, man. In some places you can see the humidity and the mildew and the overgrowth where mother nature takes over in New Orleans.”

You may have read that Matthew McConaughey lost a ton of weight for The Dallas Buyers Club. You heard right. Take a look at the new trailer for the film, slated to open in November. McConaughey plays Ron Woodruff, a homophobic Dallas man who became an AIDS drug advocate when he was diagnosed with HIV. I’ll be seeing the film next week at the Toronto International Film Festival and will report back dutifully.

It’s a big deal for Cogill and his Lascaux partners, Frankey Dey, Derrick Evers, Richard Toussaint and Wade Barker. Lascaux produced the film with Curtis Burch and Latitude Productions.

Directed by Fred Schepisi, the movie stars Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche as rival teachers overseeing a competition to decide which is more important – the image or the word.

“Every day on the set in Vancouver we sensed we were creating something quite special with Clive Owen, Juliette Binoche and Fred Schepisi,” Cogill said via email. “The fact that we will be showcased first in Canada simply makes sense. But you can be sure the celebration in Texas will be just as big. It means a lot for us to be recognized by one of the finest film festivals on the planet.”

It looks like Dallas will have quite the presence up North this year. In addition to Words and Pictures, Toronto will also show Dallas Buyers Club, starring Matthew McConaughey as real-life HIV drug advocate Ron Woodruff; and Parkland,the Tom Hanks-produced drama about the chaotic events at Parkland Hospital the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Lascaux films is currently in Austin shooting a faith-based feature comedy with Riot Studios called Believe Me. “It’s really funny,” Cogill says. Also, in association with Michael Cain, Miles Hargrove and M3 Films, Lascaux is putting the final touches on their feature documentary The Starck Project,” about the legendary Starck Club during the mid ’80s in Dallas.

On this week’s show, Stephen and I sit down with Dallas’ multi-talented David Lowery. He’s on a bit of a roll: His Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was a Sundance darling, and he’s got big projects coming up with Disney and Robert Redford. (He’s also a very nice dude). Plus: Talking Mud with Matthew McConaughey and writer/director Jeff Nichols. Listen up right here, and make sure to subscribe on iTunes.

Sunday’s Dallas Morning News will feature my interview with Matthew McConaughey about his new film Mud, which opens next Friday (April 26). It’s the latest in a series of strong character performances after a string of less-than-scintillating romantic comedy roles. We also talked about his performance in the upcoming Dallas Buyers Club, for which he lost 50 pounds to play a homophobic HIV patient who helped lead the fight to make alternative AIDS drugs available in the U.S.

“It wasn’t that hard to lose the weight,” McConaughey told me. “I was 182 pounds. This guy had HIV, so I needed to get down. The hard part was stopping once I got down to 135. It was almost like I was high on it. I just kept going south. I would start eating more, and my body would say, ‘No, we’re good, we’re still going south. We get the message loud and clear.’ Then afterward, I’m in the high 160s and feeling good, but there’s a certain hyper-acuity that I kind of miss right now.”

Any dieting side effects?

“Now mind you, there are other desires besides food that all of a sudden disappear. Every cell is like a baby bird in a nest. There’s no sublimation. But it was quite fun, and it ended up being a really good spiritual adventure for me. But it does come with some physical elements, like in your joints. A ten-yard sprint and you’re done. Your knees just lock up.”

Here’s a snippet of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County as it appeared onstage in Atlanta, Ga., last spring.

Stephen King, John Mellencamp and Fort Worth’s own T Bone Burnett have been collaborating for some time — 13 years, to be exact — on a Southern Gothic, supernatural musical called Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. The musical had a short run at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Ga., last spring, and now a soundtrack is coming out. In a press release, the show is described as having a blues-and-roots musical backdrop for its “haunting tale of fraternal love, lust, jealousy and revenge.”

Musicians whose work appears on the CD will include Elvis Costello, Neko Case, Kris Kristofferson, Ryan Bingham, Roseanne Cash, Taj Mahal, Sheryl Crow and Mellencamp. King wrote the book for the show, and Burnett provided musical direction. Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey, Samantha Mathis and Meg Ryan are also involved. You’ll be able to get special editions of the CD, which comes out June 4, that include dialogue, the libretto and more.

On this week’s podcast, we check in with Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Richard Linklater, the stars and director of Bernie. That’s the new tale of murder and gossip in East Texas. And we check in with Dallas Video Fest’s Bart Weiss, currently overseeing the cinematic circus that is the 24 Hour Video Race. (Ever make a movie in a day)? Listen up right here, and subscribe on iTunes.

AUSTIN – Oklahoma native Tracy Letts wrote his macabre crime play Killer Joe in 1993, after he moved away from Dallas. The play, however, is based in some shady corners of Big D (off Harry Hines Boulevard, to be exact).

Killer Joe, the movie, showed Saturday night at SXSW Film after premiering last fall in Toronto. It’s a brutal film – brutal enough to garner an NC-17 rating (currently under appeal) – with a menacing turn by Matthew McConaughy as the title character. (Among other deeds, he uses a fried chicken drumstick for purposes other than eating. Protecting and serving: not high on his priority list).

When I talked to Letts Sunday morning he told me the play was inspired by a true crime story in Florida. But Dallas still felt like the right city to base a story about a bungled family murder job and a psycho cop with a smooth, charming veneer.